WaPo: Faithful servants of New Orleans
Source: Washington Post
This is enough to bring anyone religion:
It is not the fact that Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church sits in the middle of a Midwestern cornfield that makes it notable. Nor even that its pastor preaches in jeans and sandals to a working-class congregation sipping coffee in shorts and T-shirts.
More to the point: Of the hundreds of American churches, ministries and local faith-based organizations that for almost three years have poured themselves out on behalf of wounded New Orleans, few have matched the sustained commitment of this megachurch 15 miles north of Dayton.
Over 2 1/2 years, Ginghamsburg has sent 41 teams of volunteers to help rebuild the parts of New Orleans that were damaged in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina.
They are still coming. Five teams have gone so far this year; six more are booked.
"We'll keep coming until people tell us to stop," said Craig Maxwell, Ginghamsburg's director of global missions. "And we'll keep promoting it, to make sure people know the need is still there."
The Ohio volunteers come out of a faith community so ferociously committed to aiding the poor, whether in Dayton or Darfur, that its pastor, the Rev. Mike Slaughter, 56, regularly admonishes his congregation, "You get no points for coming to church on Sunday."
